


Complicated

by bioticbootyshaker



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-06
Updated: 2016-06-06
Packaged: 2018-07-12 16:38:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7113706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bioticbootyshaker/pseuds/bioticbootyshaker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After being exiled from his home, Koth Vortena meets Lana Beniko, on a mission to rescue an old friend from the clutches of the Eternal Empire. Banding together against impossible -- and suicidal -- odds, the two realize that they've complicated the situation, and each other, irrevocably.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Complicated

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sirlancelot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirlancelot/gifts).



_One  
Zakuul_

The first time she laughed, they were sitting together in the little ramshackle place Lana kept on Zakuul, outside of the city proper. Faintly, in the distance, Koth could hear thunder, and he had been just frightened and exhausted enough not to know if it was actually thunder, or the sound of a hundred, a thousand, a million boots marching after him. 

He was a traitor, a defector, an exile; that should have been at the forefront of his mind, it should have been the only thing that he could form any kind of thought around. But, instead, Koth thought of how Lana looked when she laughed, of how her nose and eyes crinkled and her cheeks flushed and her teeth caught briefly at her bottom lip when she realized she’d laughed aloud like some silly teenage girl.

Koth couldn’t remember what he’d said to make her laugh -- honestly, he wished he’d paid more attention to his words, so he could make her laugh again -- but he enjoyed the sight of her, enjoyed the energy between them. He’d been through hell before he’d run into her, skulking around in the swamps of Zakuul, and everything after that had been a blur -- they’d run together, with no idea of who the other was, only sure that they had to rely on one another to survive the pursuers who wanted him -- them? -- dead. 

Now, everything seemed surreal to think about. Koth had never thought of desertion or exile before. Why would he? He loved Zakuul, supported his Eternal Empire, was the perfect example of what an officer should be. And in a day, everything had changed. His finger had curled around the trigger of his gun, and then relaxed, and now there he was, sitting in some shack with a woman he barely knew patching up his torn shoulder, thinking about how beautiful she looked when she laughed. 

At least he wasn’t lying dead in the swamp, that was something, he supposed.

“Feel dizzy,” Koth said, and he hadn’t known how dry his throat was until he spoke and his voice was nothing but a dusty croak. “Must’ve got knocked around some.”

Yes, that explained it. He was behaving like an idiot boy, and that was why. He obviously had a concussion. From where, Koth had no idea, but it made such absolute sense that he seized onto it, with more gratitude than anyone should have. 

Lana stood and stepped closer, running her fingers through his hair and pressing against his scalp, and--- Oh, that was no good. That was entirely the _opposite_ of good---

“I don’t see anything,” Lana said. Mercifully, she sat back down in front of him, staring at him with a naked curiosity that he’d never seen from anyone before. She seemed very unafraid of their circumstances, unafraid of the fact that she’d taken in a man she didn’t know when an entire _planet_ was hunting him. “Are you thirsty?” Lana asked, reaching behind her and holding out a cup of water to him. “It’s been so long since I’ve... taken care of someone, I am entirely out of practice.”

“No,” Koth said, quickly. He flushed, accepting the water. “I mean, yes, I’m thirsty, but---” Instead of making an even bigger ass of himself, Koth swallowed down the water. 

Silence stretched between them, not entirely uncomfortable, and neither of them seemed in any hurry to fill it. He must have dozed off for a moment, because Lana’s hand was on his shoulder, shaking him awake. Her insistence on helping him was... endearing, if not a little confusing. She had no reason to take care of him, no reason to worry for him -- if that was what she was doing, Koth honestly had no idea -- she had no reason to even run with him. She could have run by herself, could have disappeared and never brought the wrath of Zakuul down on herself.

But instead, she slipped her arm around his waist and tucked her head under his arm, and helped him over to the bed. It sagged in the middle, and had seen better days, but Koth thought it was probably the best bed he’d ever laid in.

“I can sleep on the floor,” Koth protested, doing his best to sit up. “You can have the bed.”

Lana pushed him back down, firmly. 

“It’s fine,” she said. “I have no intention of sleeping any time soon. You should rest.”

He had a million things he wanted to ask her. What was she doing in the swamps? Why had she been poking around somewhere she obviously didn’t belong? Why was a Sith on Zakuul? 

Why had she taken him with her?

But everything was dimming to gray, and Koth was moving down into darkness.

And the last thing he saw, for a while, was Lana smiling at him.

 

_Two_

“Lana!”

Everything stopped as her name echoed through the trees, shaking birds loose from their nests and out against the sky. Koth scrambled from where he’d been knocked on his back, watching Lana stagger backwards and fall hard onto her knees. Her hand was pressed against her midsection, blood pouring through her fingers, and her eyes were dazed; she looked more confused than injured, looking down at the blood pouring through her fingers with an expression of _curiosity._

The Zakuulan Guard that had fallen on top of them as they’d made their way through the dense forest was now mostly dead -- six or seven or maybe a hundred of them, Koth had honestly lost count -- but the one that had put a hole through Lana’s stomach had managed to squeeze the trigger of his blaster before he’d died. Of course he had, that was standard training for every soldier and officer and lowly guard -- if you couldn’t complete the assignment, you could take as many of the enemy with you as you could before you died. 

He was bleeding from several grazes and nicks and cuts, and his fingertips and palm were singed from where his blaster had overheated; but he ignored everything and moved to where Lana sagged on her knees. Koth’s boots squelched through the mud, and he felt like it took him several _years_ to reach her, but when he was finally beside her he dropped to his knees with her and put his arm around her shoulder. 

Lana looked up at him, that familiar purse on her lips, and huffed out a heavy sigh. “I think I’ve been shot,” she said, matter-of-factly. And then, amazingly, she _laughed_ , a short, sharp bark, with no humor. “This is rather embarrassing.”

“Yeah,” Koth agreed. “I don’t know how you’re ever gonna live this down. Get it together, Beniko.”

Koth smiled at her, but it was trembling, and he wiped at his eyes with his knuckles, making some excuse about the dust or the pollen or something else when he saw tears streaked with blood on the back of his hand. 

_Weren’t you an officer in the Zakuulan army?_ Koth chided. _Act like it. Take care of her. Get her somewhere safe. Do_ something _useful._

He was no force-user, in fact he doubted very much that even a force-user would have been much help with the wound that she’d sustained, but he knew about patching someone up after the heat of battle had passed. Fleetingly, he thought of how many friends he’d held when they’d taken their final breaths, and he violently shoved the thoughts aside. Lana wasn’t going to die, he would make sure of it. 

Slowly, Koth moved behind Lana, letting her sag back against him, holding her as she rested her weight against his chest. She blinked up at him, not sure what he meant to do, but sure that he wouldn’t hurt her. If the moment hadn’t been so dire, Koth might have reflected on what it meant to have gained her trust, but she was losing blood, and her eyelids were growing heavy, and so he got to work. 

“Just stay with me, Lana, okay?” Koth whispered. “It’s gonna be alright. You’re lucky I’m so talented on top of being so handsome.”

“Lucky me,” Lana murmured, her eyes getting heavier. 

“Hey, stay with me,” Koth repeated, with more desperation in his voice. “Talk to me, okay? Talk to me about the person you’re looking for. You said she’s a Jedi, so why do you care about her so much? Talk to me about that guy you shacked up with on Rishi---”

“Theron,” Lana said. “I’ve told you his name a thousand times.”

“Right,” Koth said. “Theron.”

“We were hardly shacked up,” Lana continued, and as she spoke, Koth tended to her, stopping when she complained about the pain or when she drew in a sharp, sudden breath. “He was -- is -- a friend. I think. I... hope.”

“That sounds complicated,” Koth said, urging her to keep talking.

“What isn’t complicated?” Lana asked, and the exhaustion in her voice, the hopelessness, hurt him. He didn’t like hearing her so defeated. 

She fell silent, and Koth looked to her, expecting to find her passed out from the pain and blood loss. But instead, he found Lana looking at him, openly and curiously and _nakedly_ , the way she always did. He wondered if all Sith stared as boldly and intensely as Lana did, without an ounce of shame or fear to shade their eyes. Funny, Koth preferred to think it was only something Lana did -- only something she did with _him_. 

“ _You’re_ complicated,” Lana whispered.

Okay, he hadn’t been expecting _that_.

“Uh, sorry?” 

“I came here to find the Jedi,” Lana continued. “When you got involved, you complicated everything. You made it impossible to move unseen, to keep myself hidden while I worked to infiltrate where she’s being held and free her. I should have left you behind months ago. You’ve slowed me down and nearly compromised my objective multiple times. There is no logical reason for us to remain together.”

Obviously, his hurt showed on his face, because Lana reached up and touched his cheek, her palm cool and soft and... _shit_ he loved the way she touched him and the way she smiled at him and the way she looked at him with that naked curiosity. 

“You’ve complicated everything,” she said. “You’ve complicated _me_.”

After that, she _did_ pass out from the pain and the blood loss, but Koth had managed to patch her up well enough to lift her up into his arms and carry her back to their little makeshift base of operations. 

_You’ve complicated everything._

_You’ve complicated me._

Koth knew exactly how she felt. 

 

 

_Three_

Days turned into weeks, and weeks into months. Wounds closed and healed, and scars formed. Sometimes when Lana moved, when her shirt lifted over her stomach, he could see the ugly scar where the bolt had pierced her, and a shiver moved through his heart. And he would remember her voice, soft and fading, whispering that he’d complicated things, that he’d complicated _her_ , and the shiver would move through his chest and down his spine.

She would catch him sometimes, watching her, and she would meet his eyes with that same boldness and intensity that she always did. How strange, that she could be so confident and sure in the face of... whatever it was between them. Again, Koth wondered if it was the nature of the Sith, or only _her_ nature. Did she look at everyone the way she looked at him? Had she looked at her friend Theron the same way, when they’d lived together on Rishi?

The last thought seemed petty and small and _jealous_ , and it always made his stomach and his mouth twist. Why should he care who she’d gotten close to, or how she looked at others? They were helping each other, and fighting against Zakuul was far more important than whatever little schoolboy crush he had on her. After her Outlander was freed, Lana would most likely return to her side to aid her, and she would forget all about him.

That hurt more than he liked to admit.

Maybe it was better to ignore the feeling, to shove it aside and bury it deep down, but Koth had never been one to hide what he was feeling. Bravery had always been one of his best and worst traits. Hiding away would have been easier, but he was caught in the middle of a war, and he was being hunted and pursued like a dangerous animal, and he was very tired of having nothing to hold onto except the faint smoke of hope.

Koth would rather hold onto her, even if it was only for a little while. 

Lana was tangible, and warm, and solid. She was the only damn thing that made any kind of _sense_ to him, and that was as welcome as it was surprising. 

“I want to go with you,” Koth said, suddenly, without trying to subtly break the silence between them and direct the conversation towards what he wanted. If he was going to be honest, then he was going to be entirely honest, and he wouldn’t waste her time or insult the friendship they’d made by mincing words with her. 

Lana, of course, remained unfazed, looking at him with one eyebrow raised and her lips pursed. The light was low, and shadows drifted across her face, the gold of her eyes standing out broadly against the darkness. Koth could understand why the Sith were so feared and, at the same time, so revered. Lana was terrifyingly beautiful -- dangerous and sharp and wicked and _lovely_ , and he was scared of how badly he wanted her. 

“When you go,” Koth continued, suddenly nervous with her eyes on him. “I, uh, I want to go with you when you go.”

“With me?” Lana asked. Koth couldn’t tell if she was teasing him or if she was only trying to understand his meaning. Her humor was dry, and she was impossible to get a read on. 

“Yeah,” Koth said, as patiently as he could. “With you.”

Again, Koth wasn't sure if Lana let the silence stretch between them to tease him, or if she honestly had to think about whether or not she wanted him to tag along with her. Why would he stay on Zakuul, with Arcann hunting him like a wayward dog? There was nothing for him there any longer -- that realization hurt him, but not as much as it would have before he'd met Lana.

He expected her to interrogate him, to demand to know why he would want to leave the only home he'd ever known to set out into the galaxy with someone he still barely knew. But he _did_ know her, better than he'd ever known anyone else. Over the months, he'd watched her, he'd listened to her, he'd seen her devote herself wholly to another person -- and he'd recognized in Lana someone entirely unselfish. Everything that he'd learned about the Sith had prepared him for an egomaniacal, vainglorious monster; but instead, he'd found Lana. 

And he wanted to go with her, no matter where she went next.

Lana stared at him, flat and hard and stars, he felt like a bug under a microscope, wriggling and struggling for her amusement. If she was going to demand he stay behind, she could at least do him the courtesy of not having him dangle for Scyva only knew how long.

“I would enjoy your company,” Lana said, finally, after the silence had become uncomfortable and Koth had cleared his throat for what must have been the twentieth time. “I have... gotten unused to someone else being with me. I'd forgotten how nice it can be. And I... enjoy you.”

“You _‘enjoy me’_?” Koth asked, not able to resist his opportunity to tease Lana as she'd teased him. “That sounds like something you should put in a love letter, Beniko.”

For a wonder, Lana actually _blushed_ , and looked away from him. 

“On second thought,” she sighed. “Perhaps you should remain here.”

“Too late now,”Koth chuckled. “You're stuck with me.”

“Yes, well, that is assuming we actually manage to free the Jedi and escape with our lives. The odds aren't good. In fact, I've run the numbers, and there is a one in three hundred thousand and seventy three chance that we die within the first several minutes of extraction.”

“Long odds,” Koth said. “But I'm an optimistic guy, what can I say?”

“Optimism is for children,” Lana said, and for some reason Koth knew that she was teasing him now. There was a spark in her eyes that hadn't been there earlier, and her lips weren't pursed, but instead curled at the corners in a playful smile. _Stars_ , but she was beautiful, and _stars_ , she seemed to be moving closer ---

And so was he, Koth realized, right before he was standing directly in front of Lana and her hands were tangled at the front of his shirt and she was pulling him down against the subtle smile on her lips---

It wasn't like Koth had never been kissed before. He knew the mechanics well enough; not quite as well as he knew how to fly or shoot a blaster, sure, but enough to know that Lana had the best mouth in the galaxy. 

Koth had thought kissing a Sith might be like trying to put your mouth on a flame -- it would sting and burn and hurt. But Lana was cool and soft and _ticklish_ , like a feather dusted over his lips, and Koth laughed when she did, shivering when her fingers moved beneath his hair and curled against his scalp.

“I'm no child,” Koth said, his voice deep and husky. Lana looked up at him with her eyes half lidded and her pupils blown; she looked like some ravenous huntress, stalking the high grass, and _fuck_ , that made him hard.

“So I see,” Lana purred, grabbing hold of his cock through his pants and squeezing just hard enough to get a whimper out of him.

After that, everything seemed to blur together, the edges of everything melting as Koth took her into his arms and kissed her. He remembered stumbling with Lana towards the bed, remembered her breast in his hand and her heart beating hard and fast against his palm. But beyond that, he could only remember the _feeling_. The feeling of her mouth on his and her teeth on his throat and her tongue licking slow down his body -- the feeling of her nails in his thighs and her mouth around him and her hair tickling his belly.

And he remembered the _taste_ of her, when Koth had pinned her to the bed and moved his face between her thighs and made a feast of her body. He lost count of how many times she came, thrusting her hips against his face and holding him tight against her cunt, but it must have been enough to turn her limbs to jelly, because the last time her orgasm shuddered through her, she let go of him and stretched herself across the bed.

Eager didn't begin to describe what he felt when he took himself in hand and stroked himself with the taste of her come still on his tongue, and her juices on his chin. Lana watched him, with her same intense, naked stare, and he spilled over his hand with her name caught in the back of his throat and his teeth clamped over her inner thigh.

Koth waited for regret to come and put a chill on the overheated air between them. But they were both too tired to _feel_ much of anything, except contentment. Lana curled against him when he moved beside her, and Koth pressed a kiss against her forehead, liking the smell of her sweat and their sex in her hair.

They fell asleep that way, overheated and overtired and overjoyed; for the first time in a very long time.

_Four_

First, Koth noticed that his jaw was stiff and sore. He rubbed at it absently as he tossed his legs over the side of the bed. Secondly, he noticed that his clothes were strewn all over the floor, and he tried to recall how he'd managed to get his underwear over the lamp before the third realization struck: Lana wasn't there.

Feeling his stomach drop, Koth grabbed up his clothes and dressed as quickly as he could, ready to find some kind of note from Lana that she'd gone after the Outlander without him, and would leave him behind on Zakuul.

 _I'm sorry_ , he could imagine her writing. _But it's better this way, you'll see. We never could have worked..._

When he found Lana sitting in the main room, typing away at a console and obviously in no hurry to be gone, he could have kicked himself for his melodrama. Of course she wouldn't leave him behind, and of course she wouldn't leave him some tearful goodbye letter like some lovesick teenage girl.

Hearing him approach, Lana looked to him, and Koth knew that everything the night before had been a mistake. There was a guardedness to her gaze now, something that had never been there before. The nakedness and the openness were gone, and when she looked away from him, it was a relief.

“Good morning,” Lana said. 

“Lana,” Koth said, not paying much attention to the greeting. He wanted to tell her that he was sorry, that he shouldn't have kissed her and gotten caught up in whatever the hell had been so damn hot and urgent between them, but Lana stopped him.

“I love you, I suppose,” she said, so matter-of-factly that Koth had a hard time accepting it was what she'd said, and that he hadn't just misheard her. “I hope you understand that it isn't often I say that to someone, and that it... should not be taken lightly.”

“Lana---”

“The odds of you returning my affection are very rare,” Lana said, overriding him. “I spent a good portion of the night weighing the pros and cons of telling you how I felt, and even though the odds of you feeling the same are very low, I---” Lana stopped, looking at him and chewing her bottom lip before finishing: “I was feeling optimistic.”

Koth moved to where she sat, folding his arms around her and pressing his face against her throat. She remained the only thing that made any kind of sense to him -- tangible and solid and real -- and _stars_ \---

“I love you too,” Koth whispered. 

_You've complicated me._

Koth knew, when Lana kissed him, that they'd complicated each other.

And he knew that he would sooner be complicated with her, than to ever be without her.

**Author's Note:**

> written for @senyatirall on tumblr! i think this is the first koth/lana fic on ao3, which is surprising considering they're REALLY REALLY AMAZING OKAY????


End file.
